In the winter of 710, by the usual reckoning, the army of the Second Göktürk Khaganate crossed the Kögmen range through deep snow and fell on the Kirghiz in their sleep.[1] Tonyukuk had planned the march. Kül Tegin fought in it.[2] The Kirghiz khan was killed. His people submitted.[2] The campaign broke the northern arm of a coalition that had been forming against Kapgan Khan.[3] A modern history dates the death of the Kirghiz khan to 710.[4]

The coalition

The Tonyukuk inscription is the only account of the agreement that came before the campaign.[3] The Chinese khan was the enemy of the Göktürks. So was the khan of the Ten Arrows. Beyond them, the khan of the Kirghiz became an enemy too.[5] The three took counsel. They agreed to meet on the Altun forest and march together against the Göktürk khan in the east. Their reasoning was that the khan of the Göktürks was brave and his counsellor wise. Otherwise he would kill them one way or another.[6] The khan of the Türgesh said that his people would be there. The Göktürks, he said, were in confusion.[7]

When Tonyukuk heard this, he thought that it would go well if the Göktürks marched first against the Kirghiz.[7] He heard that there was only one road over the Kögmen and that snow had closed it.[7] That decision opened the war of 709 to 713.[3]

The Tang records that mention the Kirghiz in these years tell of an embassy and of a gift. The Cefu yuangui dates a Kirghiz embassy to the eleventh month of the second year of the Jinglong period, the winter of 708 to 709. It dates a banquet for the envoy to the twelfth month.[8] The Xin Tang Shu adds that the emperor Zhongzong received a Kirghiz envoy with gifts in the Jinglong period. He told the envoy that the Kirghiz country was of the same clan as the Tang and not like other foreign peoples.[9] In the first month of 711 the Tang envoy He Fengyao spoke to Mochuo, the Chinese name of Kapgan.[10] He said that Chumi and Jiankun, the old Chinese name of the Kirghiz, would come over to the khan once they heard that he was joined to the Tang by marriage.[10]

The winter crossing

Tonyukuk asked for a guide and found a man of the Az. The man said that his own land was Az and that along the river Anı a single horse could pass.[7] Tonyukuk laid the plan before his khan. He set the army in motion.[3] Beyond Ak Termil he had the men gather and mount. He broke a way through the snow.[7] Then they climbed on foot, leading the horses and holding on to the trees. They crossed the pass of Ibar and came down with difficulty.[3] For ten nights they went along the mountainside through the drifts.[7] The guide had led them wrong. He was cut down.[7] When the men were in want, the khan said: “Ride on. This is the river Anı.”[3] They rode down along it by day and by night at the gallop. They fell on the Kirghiz in their sleep.[11]

The Kül Tegin inscription tells the same march from the prince’s side. The editions restore a damaged place to read that Kül Tegin was twenty-six when the Göktürks went out against the Kirghiz.[12] They broke a way through snow as deep as a spear and marched up over the Kögmen forest. They fell on the Kirghiz in their sleep.[13] They fought the khan of the Kirghiz in the forest identified as Soŋa.[14] Kül Tegin rode the white stallion of the Bayırku and charged. He struck one man with an arrow and ran two others through.[14] In that charge a blow broke the thigh of the stallion.[14] The Göktürks killed the Kirghiz khan and took his realm.[15]

The Tonyukuk inscription gives the end of the fight in four short sentences. The Kirghiz khan and his army gathered, and the Göktürks fought and won.[11] They killed the khan, and the Kirghiz people submitted and bowed their heads.[11] The army came back over the Kögmen forest.[11]

The inscription of Bilge Khan, the elder brother of Kül Tegin, tells the campaign as his own, in his twenty-seventh year.[16][17] Before it the Çik and the Kirghiz had become enemies of the Göktürks. Bilge Khan had crossed the Kem, the Yenisei, to march against the Çik and had beaten their army.[18][17] The next year he marched against the Kirghiz, through snow as deep as a spear and up over the Kögmen forest. He fought their khan in the forest.[19][17]

The word soŋa in the account of the fight can be understood in two ways. Wilhelm Radloff took it as an adverb, “then”, and had the Göktürks fight the khan in the mountain forest after the crossing.[20] Vilhelm Thomsen rendered it “beyond”, the forest on the far side of the Kögmen.[21] A later interpretation takes it as the name of a forest, Soŋa.[14]

The Tonyukuk and Kül Tegin inscriptions word the surprise differently. The Tonyukuk inscription has kırkızıg uka basdımız, “we fell upon the Kirghiz in their sleep”. The Kül Tegin inscription has kırkız bodunug uda basdımız, “we fell upon the Kirghiz people in their sleep”.[2] In the Tonyukuk sentence the time of the attack stands in the dative, uka, which the other inscription does not use for the same event.[22]

Bars Beg

The Kül Tegin inscription names the khan of the Kirghiz: he was Bars Beg.[14] The Göktürks had given him the title of khan. They had given him the younger sister of Bilge Khan as his princess.[23] He went wrong, and so their khan died. His people became serving-women and slaves.[14] The Göktürks said that the land and water of the Kögmen should not be left without a master. They set the Az and the Kirghiz in order and came home.[14]

The passage does not say that the khan who died was the one killed in the winter campaign. It gives no year for the marriage or for the title. Readers combine the two accounts and take the khan killed in the Soŋa forest to be Bars Beg.[14] On this view the Kirghiz khan was the brother-in-law of Bilge Khan when he joined the coalition.[14]

Date

The inscriptions give no year. They count in the ages of their heroes.[24] The Tang histories of the Göktürks do not tell the campaign. They therefore give it no date.[25] The Kül Tegin inscription gives his age at death as forty-seven and the year of death as 731.[14] That puts his birth in 684 and his twenty-sixth year in 710.[14] The same inscription puts the march against the Türgesh in the same year as the campaign against the Kirghiz.[15] The Tang history dates Kapgan’s attack on the Türgesh to the Jingyun period, which is 710 to 711.[26] A second reckoning places the acquisition of the Ten Arrows about 711 to 712.[27] A campaign in winter reaches across the turn of the year. The Kirghiz campaign therefore falls in 710 or the next year. The march against the Türgesh ended in the battle of Bolchu.[3]

Aftermath

When Kül Tegin was buried in 731, the khan of the Kirghiz sent Tarduš Inanču Čor to the funeral. Envoys of the Chinese, the Tibetans, the Sogdians and the Türgesh attended as well.[28]

References

  1. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tonyukuk inscription
  2. ^ a b c Tonyukuk inscription; Kül Tegin inscription
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Tonyukuk inscription
  4. ^ Golden 1992, p. 180
  5. ^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 285
  6. ^ Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 285–286
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 286
  8. ^ Cefu yuangui, juan 970; Cefu yuangui, juan 974
  9. ^ Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
  10. ^ a b Tang Huiyao (Institutional History of the Tang), juan 94
  11. ^ a b c d Tonyukuk inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 287
  12. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Ross 1930, p. 868
  13. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Thomsen 1896, p. 109
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Kül Tegin inscription
  15. ^ a b Kül Tegin inscription; Thomsen 1896, p. 110
  16. ^ Bilge Khan inscription; Ross 1930, p. 873
  17. ^ a b c Tekin 1968, p. 276
  18. ^ Bilge Khan inscription; Thomsen 1896, p. 123
  19. ^ Bilge Khan inscription; Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, p. 59–60
  20. ^ Radloff 1894–1895, parts 1–3, p. 21
  21. ^ Thomsen 1896, p. 109
  22. ^ Erdal 2004, p. 367
  23. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 347, 367
  24. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Bilge Khan inscription
  25. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 215
  26. ^ Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  27. ^ Golden 1992
  28. ^ Kül Tegin inscription; Tekin 1968, p. 272

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Vilhelm Thomsen, Inscriptions de l'Orkhon déchiffrées (1896)
  • Wilhelm Radloff, Die alttürkischen Inschriften der Mongolei (1894–1895, parts 1–3)
  • E. Denison Ross (after Vilhelm Thomsen), The Orkhon Inscriptions; The Tonyukuk Inscription. Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen's Final Danish Rendering (1930)
  • Marcel Erdal, A Grammar of Old Turkic (2004)
  • Talât Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (1968)

Related

What links here7

Persons
Bars Beg
Peoples
Az · Chik
Institutions and Titles
Kül Tegin's Horses · Warfare of the Steppe Empires
Sources
Altın Köl Inscriptions · Tonyukuk inscription

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Göktürk campaign against the Kirghiz (710).” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/events/gokturk-campaign-against-the-kirghiz-710/

Last revised: 8 November 2026